Twitter Reveals New Rules to Combat Deep Fakes before the 2020 Election

‘Deepfakes' are videos that use Artificial intelligence technology to paste a person’s face onto a different person’s body. This article talks about how Twitter is making new rules to address deep fakes and other forms of synthetic and manipulated media and acting against them. These new rules are unveiled keeping the upcoming election in mind. Politicians and celebrities are the primary targets of these deep fakes. These deep fakes can cause harm since they spread things that are not true.

These can affect the presidential candidates negatively. One of the great examples of an amateur deep fake would be the video of the Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which circulated all over social media. The video was slowed down to give the effect that her speech was slurred and slow. To prevent this type of problem in the future, Twitter has enforced its policy on March 5, 2020. Many lawmakers are also trying to find ways to hold tech companies accountable for the spread of this misinformation. Therefore, tech companies are stepping up to prevent these kinds of issues. Every media on Twitter has to pass three tests. Twitter will be asking the following three questions to see if a media is violating its policy: Is the media synthesis or manipulated? Was it shared deceptively? Is it likely the content will cause serious harm? If the answer to the questions is yes, then the media will be removed. If a media meets fewer criteria, then the media will be marked as altered or fabricated. Other users will see a warning to retweet or like that media. Twitter did a survey last year before making these policies.

About 6500 people responded to the survey. Responder also wanted Twitter to share the knowledge with them. More than 90% of the respondents agreed with Twitter on removing the content that is meant to cause certain types of harm. Not only Twitter, but many of the other tech companies are also stepping up their policy to deal with manipulated media. In January, Facebook also unveiled its deepfake policy. They have spent $10 million to fight deepfakes. Facebook’s new policy will prohibit misleading media. However, it will exclude the manipulated media that are just parodies or satire. Facebook had said that the doctored video of Speaker Pelosi would not meet the criteria of Facebook’s deep fake policy, So, it wouldn’t be removed at the time.

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